148 Illinois Nursing Homes Make U.S. News ‘Best’ Ratings

ILLINOIS — U.S. News & World Report’s annual ratings of the best nursing homes in the country include 148 in Illinois. Just under 3,000 nursing homes in the country earned the designation of being a “U.S. News Best Nursing Home” for 2019-20.

Homes were given an overall rating, a rating for short-term rehabilitation care and a new rating this year that evaluates long-term care.

“This year, we introduced a long-term care rating,” Zach Adams, a senior health data analyst at U.S. News, told Patch. “This is for people who need ongoing daily assistance in stuff like health-related and personal care.”

The overall ratings for nursing homes in 2019-20 are based exclusively on the short-term and long-term care ratings, Adams said.

A strong emphasis was placed on staffing in methodology to compile the “U.S. News Best Nursing Home” ranking for 2019-20. Adams said staffing levels are strongly associated with quality and safety.

“We think everyone deserves to get the right amount of time and attention,” Adams said, explaining that the publication measured the percentage of days a nursing home met the federal standards for registered nurse staffing. In addition to having sufficient staff overall, the publication wanted to make sure nursing homes are still meeting some threshold on their less well-staffed days.

Patient outcomes — both positive and negative — are also a key part of the methodology.

In Illinois, 63 homes received the highest overall rating of five, 124 homes received a high-performing rating for short-term rehabilitation and 35 homes received a high-performing rating for long-term care.

Here are all the Illinois nursing homes rated as “high-performing” in either short-term or long-term care.

“Our ratings are really a starting point that we think should be used in conjunction with other sources,” Adams said, stressing that the ratings aren’t a replacement for site visits.

But for those who don’t have the time and resources to conduct such an in-depth search, Adams said U.S. News wants to offer people a really rich set of information that’s both easy to use, understandable and applicable to their situation.

>>>See U.S. News’ nursing home finder.

U.S. News used data collected and published by the federal government to develop the nursing home ratings. (Read more about the methodology.)